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Birdsville is the odds-on favourite to end a Simpson dash, especially when the gee-gees are in town. Join us as we complete the Simpson Desert Adventure.
Words by Jonh Rooth
Photography by Robb Cox
Waking up at our campsite on the side of the track 30km or so before Poeppel Corner, it occurred to me - okay, so it couldn't really be avoided short of a nose peg - that none of us had seen a shower since leaving Dalhousie. That's the hazard of desert travel - it's rare there's enough water for much more than cooking and cleaning your teeth! My thoughts turned to the incredible contrasts our magnificent country keeps popping up. Here in the Simpson, it's drier than a fresh bag of potato crisps, while back home Brisbane is underwater. But like a holiday hangover, those thoughts lasted about as long as it took for Milo's 13BT to chuck her first puff of smoke for the day. We were within an hour or so of Poeppel Corner, the intersection of Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia, and from there to Birdsville was only 170km or so. Travel-wise, our trip was nearing a rapid end, at least it was if you don't count the drive home, and nobody was thinking much past a shower and a beer at the Birdsville Races yet at most. The French Line Track we were back on cuts across the top of four or five salt lakes before reaching Poeppel Corner. After the never-ending pounding of corrugations, a lot of people find it pretty tempting to leave the track and go chucking rooster tails on the salt around now, but it's not recommended.
Apart from this part of the Simpson being a conservation park, those saltpans can get horribly boggy if you break through the crust, and there's more chance of that than normal in the month or so after a decent rain. Anyway, Milo does enough beach work to give her a fair-dinkum dose of the salts as it is, and there's very little chance of giving her an underbody wash out here, is there? At Poeppel, you really get to see your permit money in action. Wow, the whole tourist experience of being in one of the most isolated places on earth has been enhanced with a whole bunch of poles to restrict a 'carpark' on plastic logs. There's also a sign that's so politically correct it should come with a bucket and a plastic log track to the corner marker itself. This isn't the original marker either. It's a plastic replica and it's not in the right place, because Poeppel got it a tad wrong originally. Yes, so visiting Poeppel's is a real thrill - of the plastic kind anyway. It'll no doubt remind you of how overworked your own plastic has been to get this far - including the extortionate permit fee. Anyone coming from the western side has the feeling of having accomplished a difficult drive to get there at least, but fair dinkum, some parts of Australia should be left alone, and this has got to be one of them! Next thing they'll be concreting the lot to put in a casino and an airstrip just to further 'enhance the tourist experience', of course.
After plenty of muttering along these lines, we drove out of Poeppel, crossed the run south to the K1 Line and drove north to meet the QAA Line. At first, the track skirts a salt lake, and it's reasonably smooth and hard enough to get up a bit of speed. That doesn't last long, though. Some 18km later the track turns from north to east, and it's back to familiar ground - crossing low sand dunes again and dodging soft ruts. But the desert country does make a slow change as you come to that last lap before Birdsville. The sand hills get higher, but they're further apart, and the driving is easier, too. In between the dunes there's more vegetation because this country is part of an ancient flood pan that used to fill Lake Eyre. Some 70km from the K1 Line we passed the old rabbit fence built back in the 1890s in an effort to keep the bunnies out of western Queensland's cattle country before they found they could fly in to the Gold Coast instead.
Originally the fence employed hundreds of people to build and maintain, but it lasted for less than 20 years before large sections of its 800km length were covered with sand dunes, rusted out by salt lakes or carried away by floodwaters. The rabbit fence is also the boundary of the national park and Adria Downs Station, so it's the end of the Simpson proper and the start of cattle country. In fact, before long the track winds its way through a valley dotted with large coolabah trees, part of the route taken by floodwaters heading south to fill Lake Eyre these days. Indeed, there's a channel running north-south about 15km past the rabbit fence called Eyre Creek. What an amazing coincidence! That, while hardly noticeable as a creek most of the time, fills up when the floodwaters come through. This happens regularly enough to justify a bypass route to the north up the stone-covered ground to Goonamillera Crossing.
When there's water around, this is an incredible place to be, and even without it's certainly changed country compared to the sparse Simpson. The sand dunes are very soft in places too, as Lowmount Lowry found out while manoeuvring into position for a photo shoot when the mighty Dakar 60 Series sunk its rear axle a few hundred metres short of the crest. It was a snatch recovery at most, but Pat wanted to perform a self-recovery effort for the DVD, so we took advantage of Lowmount's lunge into the soft stuff - for a minute I thought we were back in Tasmania - and dug Milo's spare into the crest. Then, using the 60's 8000lb Hi-Mount winch, we plucked the truck out of its hole as easy as popping a pimple. As the ex-miner in this crew, I got to do most of the shovel work, but after days spent cramped up in Milo's cabin, the chance to stretch some muscles meant it wasn't a problem.
Being the sort of bloke who travels alone a lot - memo to self, invest in soap - I've done plenty of these 'self-recoveries' over the years, and they've always involved some pretty tense moments. Will the wheel pop out before the truck? Will the jack handle wedged in the rim come through the windshield? Will the truck's electrical system get fried from the effort of winching under a hot sun? This time, however, it was almost fun. The difference, of course, is that when you know help is travelling with you, nothing's that much of a drama. Things only get to super-serious level when it could mean life or death, which is probably the best reason ever to see places like the Simpson in convoy. Company, in a place like this, makes all the difference between a bloody hard slog and bloody good times! It took very little effort to get the 60 Series's big 35in tyres back on track, even less than I'd figured. Later that day I was to realise why when we got through to the base of Big Red and took it in turns to climb the Simpson's final act - that huge red sand dune that acts as gatekeeper to travellers coming from the east. There were still a couple of hours of sunlight left when we got to Big Red - plenty of time to try a few different crossings and line up the trucks for more of Coxy's magic photos. That time gave us all an opportunity to reflect on the vehicles themselves. The F-truck, of course, stomped up Big Red with just a tad more grumbling from that huge V8 diesel to propel it across the top with air under the front tyres. It'd proven itself totally reliable and definitely the most comfortable ride on the trip thanks to that long wheelbase and ARB's tuned suspension. Those two factors alone had made the Ford almost impervious to the corrugations that make any trip out here a pain in the, err, posterior. But with massively comfortable seats built to support a few hundred kilos of Macca-munching butt, airy conditioning to keep the harsh reality of the desert out and a huge tray to haul the beer, the big F250 was easily the pick of the bunch. It certainly made the humble Rodeo look a bit pedestrian, yet this little turbo-diesel had been an awesome workhorse for the camera crew and all their expensive clobber. Mark Distefano, ARB's Sydney workshop manager and the bloke responsible for preparing the Rodeo, did an awesome job, but it was the quality of the aftermarket products themselves that won the day. That ARB canopy was open every time we stopped for a photo at least, yet here, almost at the end of one of the dustiest trips known to man, it still looked to be sealing perfectly. Similarly, ARB's drawer system had meant virtually none of the usual vibration-related losses - you know, when the cornflakes mix it with the golden syrup, the mossie coils and the soap - and the dust sealing here was 100 percent. The Rodeo represents a classic case of good aftermarket products working together to achieve a perfect result. Sure, the drawers are great, but it's the way that Old Man Emu suspension absorbs the worst of the bangs that keeps them dust-free and floating easily.
Yes, the turbo-diesel makes nice power, but it's all the better thanks to the D-Tronic power module and Safari snorkel, and while the four-cylinder donk ran economically, that meant the Long Ranger's 112L had even more range in reserve. Some people would baulk at the idea of the little turbo-diesel Rodeo as a serious desert traveller, but equipped with ARB gear like this one, that's certainly not the case. Despite the load, Schultzy didn't come close to bogging it. While not discounting the depth of Ian's driving experience, the brilliant Cooper STs or the presence of lockers both ends, a lot of that can be attributed directly to the ease of piloting an automatic vehicle with very direct steering. This is across country that sees a manual gearbox constantly in the wrong gear. If there's less work to be done, you can concentrate more on getting it right! But talking about concentrating, or the lack of it required, you should have seen that bloody 60 Series climbing Big Red! Lowmount made it look too easy, proving yet again the benefit of a big set of feet - in this case, 35x12.5x15in Muddies on American Racing rims. After doing the hardest possible climb a couple of times and crawling over the top with ease, Mark went back and did it in reverse! This isn't a 'normal' 60 Series Toyota by any means! Completely rebuilt by ARB technicians as a testbed for their new Old Man Emu Dakar suspension systems and incorporating virtually every conceivable aftermarket 'addition', the 60 - with its full leather interior, Momo steering wheel and Paratus seats - is more show truck than workhorse any day of the week.
Yet it's typical of ARB that not only could it achieve such a high level of restoration - you've got to see under the bonnet of this 60 to realise they can look better than new - but it'd then allow it to go out and cross the Simpson! If that's not confidence in your product, I'm not thirsty! And it proves yet again that an old truck can mix it with the best of the newies when you chuck in the right equipment. After some early morning photos and another chance to enjoy the magnificent view from on top of one of Australia's icons - hey, this isn't right, where's the plastic carpark? - we drove the last 40km to Birdsville. During the crossing, we'd seen a few other vehicles as you'd expect, but with race weekend on at full pace, Birdsville and surrounds were busier than the pub with free beer. We passed an almost non-stop procession of fourbies coming out to see Big Red before we got to town and joined a tent full of hopefuls waiting for a crack at the shower block! A shower can feel awfully good sometimes, and this one was memorable. Coxy and I were wearing an inch or so of dust from travelling in Milo, and my shirt was the same colour as my face. After a change of clothes, I felt almost human, but it took a round of pies from the Birdsville Bakery to belch home the thought that we were back in civilisation again. We said g'day to our old friend Theo Nell while filling up all the vehicles at his garage, and he reminded us of our first video effort some five years ago when we'd filmed segments of Big Red to the Beach right here. He was chuffed to see Milo again too, and asked me how she was going these days.
I guess that's the first time I'd thought about it myself, and it was pretty easy to say 'better than ever'. See, while the new trucks had done the trip easily and offered all that comfort to boot, the fact was that Milo had done it just as easily, and we'd driven to Alice across the Plenty before the trip kicked off! Sometimes I'm so busy just doing it I forget how bloody good this old girl is to me. Then Pat tallied up the fuel figures, and I swear Milo's headlights lit up on their own. The big F-truck had swallowed 163L since Mount Dare, the turbocharged, but heavy, 60 Series 114L. The economical but loaded Rodeo had chewed a miserly 105L, and Milo? A mere 78L - less than half that of the big Ford and 25-percent better than the new Rodeo, yet we'd carried all the cooking gear, most of the tucker and a whole lot of heavy camping stuff besides. Anyone like to tell me there's a better engine for outback touring than a 13BT? Enough boasting, I'd better admit that none of us managed to win anything other than a flat beer at the races. There was a roaring wind out at the course too, stirring up the dust and blasting it straight in our faces.
That and the sudden hemmed-in feeling of being back among people after our desert days made the decision easy. We didn't stay the night; we left town that afternoon instead. It might seem strange to some to think that a bunch of blokes would drive west-east across the Simpson to get to the races only to leave the same day, but I reckon our readers will forgive us. Most of you already know that incredible feeling of being a long way from civilisation where your abilities, your mates and a well-equipped truck are all that's keeping you alive. The flip-side is that it takes a while to adjust to being around people again. Sometimes it's easier just to drive away and keep driving.
So we did. But as I sit here now, looking back through Coxy's photos, all I want to do is head back out there again. There's something very magical about the Simpson. It's remote, it's dramatic, it's incredible and it's a bloody perfect place to take a four-wheel drive!
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